Detector
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In general, something that reacts to stimuli in a set manner, and is either part of a living being, or made by a living being, for the purpose of doing such reacting. Such reactions include sending a signal on for further processing, or activating a reaction that has either evolved, or been designed, to aid a living being.
In telecommunications, the term detector has the following meanings:
- A device that is responsive to the presence or absence of a stimulus.
- In an AM radio receiver, a circuit or device that recovers the signal of interest from the modulated wave.
- In FM reception, a circuit called a discriminator is used to convert frequency variations to amplitude variations.
- In an optical communications receiver, a device that converts the received optical signal to another form. Note: Currently, this conversion is from optical to electrical power; however, optical-to-optical techniques are under development.
- Source: from Federal Standard 1037C
In astronomy, the detecting devices generally used is charge-coupled devices (CCD), although, before the 1990s, photographic plates were the most common.
In experimental particle physics, a particle detector is a device used to track and identify elementary particles.